Individual Blog Post 5

I watched a segment of 20/20 on a story of the rape and murder of the morning news anchorwoman, Anna Pressly, of Little Rock, Ark. This was a two party story, the first revealing the crime and then the achievements the police had made in the case. The second segment was of another woman, Kristen Edwards, who was also sexually assaulted by the same suspect but unlike Pressly, she was not murdered. This segment reveals how the police were able to catch the suspect even without witnesses.

This story was well edited. It showed visuals of what the reporter was talking about. The reporter wrote to the script well and addressed things on the screen, saying, “this house,” when the house of the killer was on screen. Another thing I thought was good that the story did was b-roll the bites (when someone was talking, the camera would be on the person for a few seconds and cut away to whatever it was they were talking about). The reporter also included reaction shots which were good and provided variety.

An improvement that can be made would be to include action shots. There were a lot of still photographs of houses, or grocery stores, but not a lot of shots of people doing things. This is essential because action shots are what cause people to pay attention and what viewers are most interested in seeing.

The reporter sometimes included himself when he asked the interviewee questions and then showed that person’s response. I think this worked out well, but a reporter has to pay attention to how many times he or she does this because otherwise the story will start to look like it is about the reporter, and not the interviewee.

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Individual Blog Post 4

Tonight’s newscast I analyzed was KRON 4 at 8 p.m. This was the first time I had ever watched this station’s news program. Another difference between these analyses was that I examined areas that I usually do not pay attention to, which included the weather report. The 8 p.m. news show had a women meteorologist, which I found rare because this profession is predominantly male. Evelyn Taft, the meteorologist, I found was almost irritating. Her tone was not conversational and she was too wordy in what she said. She took breaths at awkward moments so her speech was broken up in places where it should have flowed. Usually I do not notice how meteorologists have to ad lib for five minutes, but this news segment was obvious that she was making it up as she went because of her awkward delivery. I hope to see another of her newscasts and witness improvement, or another female meteorologist who can execute it better.

Another person who I felt did not execute his job as well as he could have was Sports Director, Gary Radnich. His comments were completely subjective. I have not seen this show before so I was unsure if his segment was an opinion piece where he said how he felt instead of reporting the news. Regardless, he made comments that I believed were extremely subjective and would be completely inappropriate for a strictly "news" segment.

Something I admired on this show was that they included what was happening on their website at that exact moment in time. They also had information flash on the bottom of the screen, the latest stories, stock market information, and the latest weather details in different areas in the Bay Area. This information is a great addition to a newscast because it provides relevant information and the viewer does not have to wait until a particular story or weather report is on to learn more.

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